Empire of shadows, p.7
Empire of Shadows, page 7
“I have made my point,” Constance said firmly. She leaned back, crossing her arms neatly over her chest.
“But there are still so many books I haven’t read!” Ellie fought back a flare of panic. “The research is terribly new. Why, just the other day, there was an article in The Century on the excavation of a Post-Classical site in Honduras that I have barely had an opportunity to browse, never mind properly annotate…”
Constance was unmoved.
“You are getting on that boat,” she declared flatly. “You are going to the Caribbean. You will purchase your equipment with the pile of earnings from your dull job that you have never bothered to properly spend. You will hire a guide, find your city, and become the most famous archaeologist in the world.”
Ellie crossed her arms mulishly.
“I am not interested in becoming famous,” she said tartly. “I would simply like to be permitted to use my skills and education to further our understanding of the ancient world.”
“So go do that, then.” Constance waved an airy hand. “I don’t even know why we’re arguing about it. It seems to me that your whole plan to keep your parents from being accosted by that thug relies upon your immediate escape to the colonies and prompt removal into the back country before he can track you down.”
“Yes,” Ellie agreed, feeling a bit dizzy. “Yes, it rather does. Oh, bother…” She lowered her head to her knees.
“Shoreditch High Street!” the conductor called from outside their compartment. “Next stop, Whitechapel. Change at Shadwell for the London & Blackwell Line.”
“That’s you,” Constance announced. “How long before we arrive at the docks and put you on that boat?”
“Approximately eighteen minutes,” Ellie replied unthinkingly.
“Well, then,” Constance returned cheerfully. “That should be plenty of time for you to get used to the idea.”
⸻
The West India Docks were loud and crowded. The narrow waterways were packed with ships. Steam stacks mingled with the tall skeletons of graceful sailboats. Passengers bumped against dockworkers as everyone hurried to load the boats scheduled to leave with the turning of the evening tide. Cranes hefted pallets of tea, oranges, and tobacco onto the wharfs as street vendors hawked whelks, mussels, peppered pies, and apple fritters.
Ellie sniffed at a baked potato cart as a line of dock workers trudged past carrying sides of frozen beef, wrapped in muslin, on their shoulders.
Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that it was nearly time for supper.
Constance slipped out the door of the shipping company office and hurried over to join her.
“You’re on,” she announced, slapping a piece of paper into Ellie’s hand. “Though it was a near thing. They’re sailing momentarily, and they were loath to deal with the paperwork for another passenger. I had to resort to an outright bribe in order to get you on board.”
“A bribe!” Ellie protested. “Connie!”
“It’s the sort of thing one does when one is on an adventure,” Constance neatly replied as she hooked a hand under Ellie’s elbow and dragged her away from the potato cart. “You shall be traveling as Mrs. Nitherscott-Watby, widow.”
“Nitherscott-Watby?” Ellie echoed in disbelief. “Did you make that up off the top of your head?”
“Of course I did,” Constance returned. “What a silly question.”
“Why must I be a widow when I am already a perfectly good spinster?” Ellie demanded.
Constance raised a wry eyebrow at her. “You are hardly some dried up old prune. You are an attractive woman of four-and-twenty. You have only passed as a spinster because you haven’t really tried to do anything scandalous yet beyond suffraging.”
“Suffrage is not a verb,” Ellie retorted.
“What else should I call it?” Constance continued without waiting for a reply. “As a widow, you will be subject to far less scrutiny than an unmarried woman. You will see the sense of it soon enough.”
“Should I invent a few imaginary siblings while I’m at it?” Ellie demanded crossly.
“A wealthy uncle might be handy,” Constance mused as she hauled Ellie toward the looming ships. “You can think about it on the boat. They’ve already sent your valise along.”
Ellie felt a bolt of panic. “What about my parents? I can’t just disappear to the other side of the world without so much as a note.”
“I’ll tell them you’ve gone off to Bournemouth on a holiday,” Constance breezily assured her. “Heaven only knows you were in desperate need of one.”
“Bournemouth?” Ellie’s headache threatened to return.
“Bournemouth is lovely, as you would know if you ever went anywhere besides the library. One more to board!” Constance hollered up at the men on the deck, who were in the process of drawing the chain across the gate for departure.
“Perhaps it’s too late,” Ellie suggested hopefully.
Constance caught Ellie’s shoulders, gripping them with a strength that belied her diminutive size.
“You are standing at the foot of the most important thing you have ever done in your life,” she declared. “Do you really want to turn around and walk away from that?”
Ellie blinked down at her friend. The answer spilled from her lips, as undeniable as it was terrifying.
“No.”
Constance narrowed her eyes with fiery determination. “Then get on the boat, Eleanora.”
Ellie yanked Constance into her arms, pressing a kiss to her cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and then hurried up the gangplank.
She extended her pass to the porter when she reached the top.
“One more to board,” she announced.
“You’re cutting it fine,” the man retorted irritably before undoing the chain and waving Ellie impatiently onto the deck.
The crew raced to haul in lines as the ship gave off a warning whistle. Behind her, the gangplank clattered as a pair of men pulled it up and tucked it away.
Ellie grasped the rail tightly as she looked out over the docks. Constance had hopped up onto a barrel of salted fish and was waving at her enthusiastically. Behind her, a lean figure with night-dark hair broke the sea of busy, moving people on the pier.
It was Jacobs, gazing up at Ellie from beside the open door of a hackney carriage.
He looked curious, and perhaps a little challenging—but not defeated, Ellie thought with a little chill.
No—he did not look at all like a man whose hopes had just been dashed.
He tipped his hat like a fencer acknowledging a fine parry. Then he was gone, the dark point of him vanishing like a ghost as the ship glided free of the dock and London receded behind her.
꩜
Five
Noon
April 22, 1898
Approaching Belize Town
At the end of Ellie’s second week on board the steamer Salerno, the green shoreline of British Honduras finally came into view.
The ship had been decidedly short on books, save for a Bible and a catalog of steamer routes. Ellie had gone through the timetables assiduously to calculate how quickly Jacobs might manage to follow her.
Jacobs had seen the boat Ellie had boarded back in London, so it would be little trouble for him to determine where she had gone. Thankfully, direct sailings from England to British Honduras took place only once a month. If Jacobs didn’t want to wait that long, he would have to take a ship to New York, then train overland to New Orleans in order to pick up the weekly mail boat to the colony. That journey would take him roughly six days longer than Ellie’s more direct route.
All of which meant that Ellie had at least six days to find a guide and abscond to the interior before Jacobs could possibly catch up to her.
On the two-week journey across the Atlantic, Ellie had plenty of time to consider what would need to be done if the map really did lead to a set of undiscovered ruins. Thorough documentation of any potential historical significance was the key to protecting such a find from ne’er-do-wells like Jacobs.
Ellie would submit her findings to both the colonial authorities and the academic journals. In doing so, she would clearly establish the importance of the site and the need for its ongoing investigation and protection.
She was still mulling over which of the journals she would approach first. The most respectable ones were also the ones most likely to balk at accepting a submission from a woman.
Ellie was also aware that her efforts, if successful, might very well force the world to finally accept her as an archaeologist and scholar—and why not? She had all the training and education required for the job. That she was excluded from the field purely on the basis of her gender was the rankest injustice.
If she were able to crack open the resistant nut of the British scientific establishment, perhaps it would become easier for other women to follow her. The thought added wind to her sails.
Of course, all of that depended upon whether or not anything worth finding actually lay at the end of her map.
British Honduras’s capital, Belize Town, lacked a proper harbor. The Salerno was forced to anchor two miles from the long, verdant shoreline. The passengers and freight were then shuttled to land by a flotilla of little rowboats and fishing craft, which wove through the dotted coral reefs and cays with obvious expertise. The little islets were lined with stretches of golden sand that bordered thick green forests dotted with colorful flowers and towering palms.
Beneath the ferry, the water was so clear that Ellie could see straight through it to the bits of shell and coral lying on the mud and sand of the sea floor.
The air was warm as a caress, and the sunlight like liquid gold. Ellie soaked up the pure pleasure of both as the sailboat ferrying her and the other passengers approached the colorful buildings that lined Belize Town’s waterfront.
As they approached the town, Ellie’s hand moved instinctively to the front of her blouse. She could just feel the subtle curve of the medallion beneath the fabric. She had strung the artifact from the psalter along a piece of ribbon trimmed out of an otherwise frivolous nightdress, which Constance had thrown into her valise. The weight of the disk was cool against her skin despite the warmth of the day. Wearing the stone rather than simply concealing it among the rest of her things felt right.
The map was tucked into an opening Ellie had picked in the lining of her practical, comfortable corset. When she moved, she could feel the added stiffness of the parchment against her skin.
The river mouth that served as Belize Town’s harbor was busy with brightly painted barges and fishing boats. Ellie disembarked and filed onto the customs wharf with the other passengers, where the agent on duty submitted each of them to a cursory examination.
Ellie stepped up to the man’s desk as her turn in the queue arrived.
“Where will you be staying?” the agent asked. His English was inflected with a warm, musical rhythm.
“I hadn’t quite worked that out yet,” Ellie admitted.
“There are two hotels in Belize Town. The Imperial caters to most of our overseas visitors. You will be most comfortable there,” the agent assured her.
His description sparked a burst of alarm. Ellie had little desire to be shut up with a bunch of colonial administrators. They were all likely to be Englishmen, and Englishmen were prone to thinking that they knew best what a woman ought to be doing with herself. They were usually quite happy to impose those opinions on any female unfortunate enough to be in their vicinity.
“You said there were two hotels,” Ellie quickly cut in. “What about the other one?”
“The Rio Nuevo?” the agent asked. “You will find it on North Front Street by the river. It is quite respectable, but they serve the local sort of food. There is afternoon tea with very nice cream buns at The Imperial.”
“I don’t require cream buns,” Ellie replied shortly. “The Rio Nuevo will do very nicely, thank you.”
The agent shrugged and jotted her name into his logbook… her false name, of course.
Mrs. Nitherscott-Watby
Ellie would make Constance pay for that later.
⸻
The Hotel Rio Nuevo lay a short distance down the road from the wharf on a lovely avenue of big detached houses with abundant gardens. The hotel was actually one of those same houses, painted white with tidy black shutters, with the addition of a long, two-story wing that extended out from one side of it. Each of the two floors of the wing sported a wide, covered veranda, which looked wonderfully cool and shady.
Ellie paused before climbing the steps, surprised to realize that the building had no foundation. Instead, it had been built on a nest of thick, sturdy pilings driven into the soft ground. She lingered for a moment, distracted by the cleverness of the engineering, before forcing herself to hurry along.
The lobby took up most of the ground floor of the original house. The interior was spacious, with wood-paneled walls and a plethora of potted flowers and tropical ferns. The scattered furniture had seen some years, but all of it was clean and carefully maintained.
Ellie heard the click of billiards balls and a little burst of laughter. She skipped a few steps to the side to peer past the front desk, where a broad doorway led into a well-appointed lounge. A scattering of men of various ethnicities were settled inside. They looked quite comfortable with themselves and seemed more or less respectable.
A pair of posh English accents clanged through the warmer Kriol and Latin inflections, setting Ellie’s nerves jangling. She identified the speakers—two pale men in linen traveling suits. Thankfully, they were too engrossed in their game of cards to pay her much mind.
As Ellie approached the hotel’s front desk, a gentleman with a glowing amber complexion and a fine black mustache stepped out to meet her. The delicate lines at the corners of his eyes added to his admittedly dashing appeal.
“Good afternoon, madam.” His accent revealed a hint of Spanish influence. “I am Mr. Linares Rivas, proprietor. Will you be joining us here at the Hotel Rio Nuevo?”
“I should be very glad to,” Ellie replied stoutly.
“And how long will you be with us?” he asked with his pen poised over his book.
“No more than six days, I should think,” Ellie replied, thinking uncomfortably of steamer timetables and potentially villainous arrivals.
“Do forgive the question, but are you traveling alone, Mrs…?” He paused, waiting for her answer.
“Nitherscott-Watby,” Ellie filled in.
She tried not to wince at Constance’s terrible name, and then scrambled to think of the right answer to the proprietor’s question.
There had been no one but men in the Rio Nuevo’s lounge—or on the Salerno, for that matter, though the boat had carried only a handful of passengers as most of its space was given over to freight. The careful concern Ellie had observed in the customs agent earlier also signaled that European women traveling alone did not often visit this remote colony.
Ellie had no desire to draw more attention to herself than was strictly necessary. She needed a story—quickly.
“I will be joined in a few days by my… uncle,” she offered awkwardly. “My Uncle Oliver. He’s in… investments. Mining. Mining investments.
Mr. Linares blinked at her, though his expression remained otherwise unimpeachably polite.
“Will Mr. Oliver need a room?” he asked.
“What?” Ellie returned, startled.
“Your uncle,” he repeated patiently as his warm brown eyes flashed with just a hint of humor. “Will he need a room?”
“Oh! No. No, I am sure that he won’t,” Ellie quickly replied. “He will—ah… That is, we will be traveling on together as soon as he arrives.”
She flashed the hotelier a reassuring smile that hopefully offset her admittedly scrambled explanation.
Blast it. She was going to need to get much better at lying.
Mr. Linares flipped through his register, then turned and plucked a key from the rack on the wall behind him.
“I will put you in Room 201,” he announced. “That way, you will be nearest to my wife and myself in case you require any assistance while you are here. We are just down the hall.”
Ellie blinked at him, startled by this unexpected thoughtfulness.
“That’s very kind of you,” she said.
He flashed her a genuine and decidedly charming smile. Ellie felt compelled to smile back.
“The rate is six shillings a day. Unless you are paying in dollars?” he prompted.
Ellie shook her head.
“Dinner is served at seven,” he continued easily. “Breakfast at eight and a fine lunch at half past twelve. All are included with your fare. Should you wish to undertake any excursions—a boat ride to the cays or a bit of shell collecting—simply inquire and we will be happy to arrange it. And if you will forgive me for the informality, I do like to mention to our guests that the hotel is in possession of a full bath. I find that our arrivals fresh from the sea are quite appreciative of it. If you would like, I can reserve it for you and have hot water sent over for an additional shilling,” he added with graceful delicacy.
Ellie had been making do with ablutions at a basin in her small cabin on the Salerno for the last two weeks. The notion of a proper soak in an actual tub sounded like the very picture of luxury.
“That would be delightful,” she replied.
“Óscar!” Mr. Linares called out, directing his voice into the back office. “Llene la tina para esta señora. Téngala lista en un cuarto de hora—¿Entendido?”
A lanky teenager poked his head through the doorway.
“Aarite, Papá!” the boy replied with just a hint of adolescent irritation.
Mr. Linares handed Ellie the key.
“You are at the top of the stairs on the right. You will find the bath on the ground floor directly beneath your room—and please let us know if there is anything else we can do to make your stay comfortable. Welcome to Belize Town, Mrs. Nitherscott-Watby,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“I am very glad to be here,” Ellie replied—and she found that she meant every word.
